Easton Family Loses Suit Over Welfare Letter

April 24, 1985|by PEG RHODIN, The Morning Call

A Northampton County jury decided yesterday that the Easton Publishing Co. did not invade an Easton family's privacy when it printed a column purporting to be a letter from an applicant for public welfare.

The panel of seven women and five men returned the verdict in favor of the publishing company in a suit filed by the family of Brigitte Harris, 333 N. 11th St.

The suit claimed that Harris, her children and her granddaughter could readily be identified as the unnamed family in the column. It appeared April 25, 1979, in The Express, an Easton newspaper.

Harris testified early in the two-day trial that she was offended and embarrassed by the article, which appeared to be a letter from a native of Germany who married an American soldier and who was seeking medical benefits for her daughter, pregnant for the second time at the age of 16.

She said she had given the information in confidence to a Department of Public Welfare employee and then had withdrawn her application rather than discuss her family conditions further.

Charles Wilson of Scranton, the only witness for the publishing company, said he prepared the weekly column for 10 years for the Department of Public Welfare in Harrisburg, which distributed it without cost to 50 Pennsylvania newspapers. Written in the form of a letter, it was meant to provide information about welfare benefits and was based on actual case histories.

However, according to a statement from DPW read into the record by defense lawyer Ronald Shipman, "every effort was made to disguise all identifying data."

Judge Robert Freedberg explained to the jurors before they began deliberating that he already had ruled the facts appearing in the column "were not of legitimate concern to the public."

He advised them that "the disclosed facts must necessarily be identified with the plaintiffs."

"The simple fact that they were published in a newspaper is not enough to be considered giving them publicity," the judge said. "You must decide whether the publicity was highly offensive to reasonable people of ordinary sensibility."

Attorney Margaret Poswistilo, representing the Harrises, said that The Express should have included a disclaimer furnished by the DPW and initials and a Reading address which came with the original material from Harrisburg.

"If all the people in Easton saw the initials and the fact that the 'letter' came from Reading, they would be less inclined to think the German war bride to whom it referred came from Easton," she said.

"The paper erred by publishing a letter without making sure all the information which came with the letter was included," Poswistilo said.

She urged the jury to consider whether "the Harrises' reaction was reasonable. Did they have a right to feel offended to have that published for all to read?"

Shipman said the newspaper tried to provide a public service by printing a column "which would convey to readers the information they needed and had no other way to get."

The article was sent by the state and "there was no possible way The Express or any of its employees knew this column had anything to do with anyone in Easton," he said.

He contended that only after Harris showed the column to friends and family and insisted that it dealt with her application were they even aware of it.

Shipman called the lawsuit "frivolous - an attempt to make money by suing a big money defendant."

"If (Harris) was harmed, she was harmed by her own conduct," he said. "We had nothing to do with that . . . The seed of this lawsuit was she didn't want to talk to the welfare office about the other people in her family. That had nothing to do with the newspaper. The only harm done in this case, she brought on herself. We had nothing to do with it."

He called on the jurors "not to give a penny" in damages to the Harris family.

Poswistilo responded, "The harm in this case is difficult to assess people look down on you."

She said Harris' showing the article to others was a "natural reaction of someone who thinks she's been harmed by an article in the newspaper." She wanted to determine if she was right in "feeling she was harmed," the attorney said.

Poswistilo suggested that "the reasons the initials and disclaimer were omitted was the Easton Expess wanted the article to appear more real, to appear as if an actual person had written to The Express and wanted help."